South Sound 911 program brings counselors into emergency dispatchers

As the largest 911 call center in Washington, serving 38 police and fire agencies in Pierce County, South Sound 911 has seen a growing number of the nearly one million annual calls they receive involve someone experiencing a mental or behavioral health crisis.

Aiming to better support these callers, the emergency 911 center has launched a first of its kind model that will bring counselors from the state’s 988 mental health hotline to work alongside dispatchers inside its central-Tacoma office. The collaboration aims to make it easier and faster for dispatchers to divert behavioral health calls away from first responders and towards mental health professionals.

The new program, launched in June, is one of just three in the state created through a year-long pilot program known as the Mental Health Crisis Call Diversion Initiative. The effort is a partnership between the Washington Department of Health and the three providers who oversee the state’s 988 mental health hotlines.

Volunteers of America, the designated 998 providers for phone lines in all of Western Washington outside of King County, have partnered with South Sound 911 to run the co-location facility in Tacoma. The program launched this summer with just one counselor, but at full-strength will have six plus a coordinator to field 988 calls. The partnership currently runs during peak hours of 2 p.m. to midnight, but will be 24/7 once fully staffed.

The need for the program “came from the understanding that a lot of calls reach 911 that may contain a mental health or behavioral health component and could benefit from a behavioral health type response rather than a law enforcement response,” said Courtney Colwell, VOA’s 988 director.

The Tacoma co-location hub, joined by similar pilot centers in the Seattle and Spokane areas, marks an expansion for the recently launched 988 mental health hotline.

The three-digit number was expanded and implemented by the Washington legislature in 2022. It was as a replacement for the ten-digit National Suicide Prevention Hotline; Launching alongside a national rise in suicides rates that year, according to the data from the Centers for Disease Control.

Somewhere between 7,000 and 8,600 Washingtonians called the 988 hotline each month during its first year of implementation, a November report from the Washington State Health Care Authority found.

Prior to launching the co-location center, 988 workers and their predecessor at the Suicide Prevention Hotline had worked alongside 911 staffers. Dispatchers at 911 regularly made referrals, or “handoffs” to the mental health hotline. But being in separate spaces and operating independently of each other occasionally led to inefficiencies and had limitations, said Dianna Caber, a communications center manager at South Sound 911.

Alongside other challenges, callers could feel like they were being passed between different agencies, possibly worsening their crisis without getting the right care, she said. A person in crisis also may not be aware of the differences between the two numbers or that 988 exists, she said, and be unsure who to call.

“A lot of people who call in crisis end up having a call entered for a police or fire response because they called 911,” Caber said. “Whereas, if they would've called 988, they may have immediately been connected with a counselor or someone who could provide emotional or crisis support for them at that moment.”

With the new co-location hub, Caber said they eliminate many of those concerns, making it easier and faster to support callers throughout the entire call. They also ensure callers get an appropriate response – regardless of what number they dial.

“Our goal really was to create that no-wrong-door approach where someone in crisis isn’t trying to decipher or learn what number is the right number to call,” she said. “We’re simply connecting them with the best resources for their situation.”

By co-locating on the South Sound 911 campus, Colwell said 988 crisis counselors can both offer more appropriate care to those reaching out in crisis, hopefully creating opportunities for better outcomes, while also opening up 911 lines and dispatchers for others to handle other emergencies. Counselors, who vary in training from masters level clinicians to those with bachelor's degrees and a certified peer support credential, can also spend more time with callers than a 911 operator can, she said.

Generally, a call would get transferred to a counselor if a person is in a mental health crisis or having suicidal ideations, but not a threat to themselves or others. Counselors can also get involved simultaneously with a dispatcher if a situation requires mental health support and first responders.

“I think it's a terrific program,” said Gig Harbor Police Chief Kelly Busey, whose department is one of the 38 agencies in the county who rely on South Sound 911.

Anecdotally, Busey said his officers are responding daily to calls involving mental health, saying they have notably increased. The cohabitation program could lead to less patrol responses and better results for callers seeking a behavioral health specialist, he said.

Early evidence suggests that is the case. In 100 days of work in 2023, Colwell said the co-location hub ended with an 82% call diversion rate, meaning a call was diverted completely from 911 and law enforcement systems and instead handled by 988 counselors.

“We had a lot of success stories come out of this period, and we’re continuing to see good things,” she said.

Conor Wilson is a Murrow News fellow, reporting for the Kitsap Sun and Gig Harbor Now, a nonprofit newsroom based in Gig Harbor, through a program managed by Washington State University.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Tacoma 911 hub adding counselors to handle behavioral health calls